[sdiy] Connector question, possibly OT

[Nicolai Czempin]

I'm currently going through "The Art of Electronics" by Horowitz/Hill 
(and thoroughly enjoying it!).

They make a comment about connectors:
"The so-called phono jack in audio equipment is a nice leson in bad 
design, because the inner conductor mates before the shield when you 
plug it in; furthermore, the design of the connector is such that both 
shield and center tend to make poor contact. You've undoubtedly *heard* 
the results! Not to be outdone, the television industry has responded 
with its own bad standard, the type F coax "connector", which uses the 
unsupported inner wire of the coax as the pin of the male plug, and a 
shoddy arrangement to mate the shield."

What exactly are they referring to? I think for the TV connector I know 
what they mean, those standard antenna cables/connectors; I guess they 
are the same here in Europe.
But for the audio part, I am aware of two kinds of connectors:
a) What we in Germany call "cinch", which normally come in red and white 
for stereo connections, as well as a yellow one for RGB video.
b) "Klinkenstecker" which come in 6.35 mm "banana" variety as well as 
3.5 and 2.5 mm versions, available both in mono and in stereo. From the 
Doepfer page on the MCV4 midi/cv interface at 
http://www.doepfer.de/mcv4.htm (the previous link in another message was 
wrong---framesets at work again :-(), which has text both in English and 
in German, I gather that the 6.35 mm is 1/4 inches.


So, which of these two types are Horowitz/Hill talking about when 
discussing "phono jacks"?

mfg Nicolai